Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Senator Joyce, perhaps you should not have voted for it. But then, if you had not, we would not be here today. The opposition now wants to reintroduce merits review—again, a move which would cause uncertainty and unnecessary delays for the industry.

In relation to binding rules of conduct, the bill provides that they will have a maximum duration of 12 months. Furthermore, the ACCC will have to commence a public inquiry to vary the access determination or to make a new access determination within 30 days of making binding rules of conduct. In other words, before any merits review or binding rules of conduct could be considered, let alone take effect, the ACCC would have to have already started the public inquiry process to make changes to the relevant access determination.

The effect of the coalition’s amendment will be to waste the resources of the Australian Competition Tribunal, the ACCC and the telco industry on a meaningless exercise in red tape.